We should be close to .500 this season and making some noise in the Big 12. May be a couple years before we are competing for the league title but I can see KU making a post season tournament possibly this year or next.

Great article on the school that produced three verbal committments to the KU women's program and why UConn Coach Gene Auriema has promised to never step foot in Duncanville again--

Is Duncanville the UConn of girls high school basketball? They're more alike than you may know

By Greg RiddleThe Dallas Morning News Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 2, 2017. Duncanville went on to win the UIL Class 6A girls basketball state championship.DUNCANVILLE -- Duncanville was involved in one of the most memorable losses for Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriema.The Hall of Fame coach let Tamika Catchings know about it after the former Duncanville star signed with Tennessee in November 1996. Catchings said UConn didn't even make her final four of college choices, which were Tennessee, Illinois, USC and Arkansas."We laugh a lot when I'm around Geno," Catchings said Wednesday during a phone call from Greenville, S.C., where she was part of the SEC Network's broadcast team for the league's postseason tournament. "Geno would always say, 'If there's one player that I'm so mad I didn't get, it's you.'"Duncanville coach Cathy Self-Morgan said that's why Auriemma hasn't been back to recruit at Duncanville."When she signed with Tennessee, he said he wouldn't step foot in Duncanville again, and he hasn't," Self-Morgan said.Catchings won a national championship at Tennessee, was named the WNBA MVP in both the regular season (2011) and Finals (2012) and earned four Olympic gold medals. Auriemma built a dynasty at Connecticut with similar transcendent players.UConn has won 11 national championships, including the last four. The Huskies have had 32 players go on to play in the WNBA, and they will take an NCAA-record 104-game winning streak into this weekend's American Athletic Conference tournament.Championships at the highest level, 100-game winning streaks and stars moving on to bigger things .... that should sound familiar to Duncanville fans as their team prepares to play Converse Judson in a Class 6A state semifinal at 8:30 p.m. Friday at the Alamodome in San Antonio. With that, we must ask, as folks have done on Twitter already: Is Duncanville the UConn of high school girls basketball?"It's hard to compare, because UConn, they recruit, they get all the best players in the country. They don't have to worry about a lot of the things that we have to worry about as a high school coach," said South Grand Prairie's Samantha Morrow, the only coach in UIL girls basketball history to win four consecutive state titles in the largest classification (accomplished at Mansfield from 1999 to 2002).High schools have a significantly smaller pool of players to choose from when hosting tryouts. Still, Duncanville and UConn have their similarities.

"What Coach Self-Morgan has been able to do is develop her players to fit into the system that she has," said Catchings, who retired after the 2016 WNBA season. "Geno is able to do the same thing."

By the numbers

Duncanville (37-2) is playing in the state tournament for the 25th time. UConn has 17 Final Four appearances.The Pantherettes, ranked No. 15 nationally by USA Today, have won nine state championships -- the most by any school in the UIL's largest classification. The 11 national titles won by the UConn women are tied with the UCLA men for most in NCAA Division I history.Duncanville has the two longest winning streaks in state history -- 134 games from 1987 to 1991 and 105 games from 2011 to 2014. The 134-game streak ranks third all-time nationally. UConn has the two longest winning streaks in NCAA history -- 104 games and 90 games.Duncanville has gone undefeated five times, including last season, when it won the 6A state title and finished 39-0. Connecticut has had six perfect seasons.Like UConn, Duncanville has had its share of All-Americans, including Catchings, who led Duncanville to a 40-0 record and state championship as a senior in the 1996-97 season. McDonald's All-Americans Tiffany Jackson-Jones, Ariel Atkins and Ciera Johnson also won state championships with the Pantherettes.Auriemma entered this season with a winning percentage of .877 at UConn -- the best mark in the history of women's college basketball. Self-Morgan has won 88.6 percent of her games at Duncanville, compiling a record of 566-73 at the school to give her a career record of 1,098-208.Still, Self-Morgan said of UConn: "They're on a whole different level."She has seen what it takes to be on Auriemma's level, having worked as an assistant for him with a junior national team."I got to work the Olympic Trials for 16s, I believe, in Colorado Springs my second year here," said Self-Morgan, who has been Duncanville's coach since 2000. "He's very business-oriented, and he just works so hard and has very high expectations for kids that he doesn't even know real well. He doesn't cut anybody any slack."

Plenty of resources[.b]

Catchings is one of many former Duncanville stars who have come back to speak to the players at their alma mater. And the weekend that this year's NCAA Women's Final Four is at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Catchings will host a tournament at Duncanville for traveling teams with junior high and high school players."Early season, before they go back to their overseas teams or WNBA team or their colleges, they come in for open gym and go up and down with the kids," Self-Morgan said of her former players. "They'll take the time to sit and either visit with them individually or as a group. They're a big resource."Self-Morgan said that she seeks advice a lot more from fellow coaches than they come to her with questions. One that she talked to recently was Ross Reedy, whose Frisco Liberty team was the 5A girls state runner-up last season."In all of our talks together, whether it's talking in-game strategy or what you're doing in the off-season, you just realize that as long as she's been doing it and even though she's very confident in herself, there's no ego," Reedy said. "It's not winning a bunch of games. She continues going out there trying to get better. That's what we're asking our kids to do."

[b]Continuing the dynasty

Duncanville senior guard Nina Alvarez said that with Duncanville having won a state title last season, it constantly feels like "we have an X on our back. Everybody wants to try to win against us." For teams such as Duncanville and UConn, that have that added pressure, what does it take to sustain a program so it can contend for a championship every year?Through a school spokesman, Auriemma declined to comment for this story. So it was left to Self-Morgan to answer the question."The legacy and the tradition that was built way before me," said Self-Morgan, who joined Sandra Meadows and Sara Hackerott as coaches who won state championships in girls basketball at Duncanville. "It's an expectation that I thrive under, and I push that with the kids that I coach to thrive under ... having the pressure to have to compete at the top level. It's what our community, our school, everybody wants to see and loves. The kids rise up to it."Duncanville star Zarielle Green has talked to former UConn All-American Moriah Jefferson, who made the 2016 WNBA all-rookie team for the San Antonio Stars and is playing in Turkey during the WNBA's off-season. Jefferson was home schooled and played for the local Texas Home Educators' Sports Association (THESA), and she is the only Texan to have ever played for Connecticut, according to UConn's athletic communications department."She said Geno is a very good coach, and it's just a different vibe down there," said Green, who leads Duncanville in scoring at 17.5 points per game. "They practice so hard, and they win."

Senior guard Aakilah Caldwell attended Duncanville games growing up, but she gained a new perspective of the program when she became a Pantherette."You knew that they worked hard, but you didn't really know how hard until you actually stepped foot into a practice, especially when I got moved up to varsity," Caldwell said. "It's an extreme different change of pace."UConn will have its second Texan next season, having signed Hurst L.D. Bell star Lexi Gordon. Gordon, who was knocked out of the playoffs by Duncanville as both a freshman and sophomore, said that Connecticut coaches told her to only come to the school "if I wanted to win ... and if I wanted to be pushed to my breaking point and be surrounded by the best people and players in women's college basketball. Don't come if you're not going to work hard, and don't come if you're very weak-minded."

Recruiting in Texas

There are 27 players from Texas high schools playing for teams currently in the top 20 of the women's NCAA rankings. California, with 29, is the only state with more.Twelve of those 27 are from Dallas-Fort Worth area schools, and Duncanville has the most, with three. Atkins and Tasia Foman are playing for 12th-ranked Texas, and Johnson is at No. 14 Louisville. Atkins was a first-team all-Big 12 selection this season, and she is UT's second-leading scorer."A major priority for me when I came back to Texas was to establish the groundwork in recruiting the state. I think it's the best basketball in the country," University of Texas coach Karen Aston said. "I probably didn't realize it until I left the state and had a chance to look at other programs across the country. It starts with a couple of things. The commitment from the administration in the high schools to girls basketball and girls athletics in general. Then I think it's the quality and the expectations of the high school coaches."When asked about Connecticut, Duncanville's Green said, "We'll talk about them ... but we don't ever compare ourselves to UConn." Green, ranked by ESPN's HoopGurlz as the nation's 12th-best recruit in the Class of 2018, said the top five schools that she is currently considering are UCLA, South Carolina, Texas A&M, Baylor and Kansas.It could be another loss for Connecticut if Green goes on to become as big of a star as other Duncanville alums.

_________________________"Those Places (UNC, UCLA) Are Great, But There's No Place Like Kansas"---Larry Brown to Bill Self.